In late May, Al Adl wa al Ihsane (The Justice and Charity Party) launched an "open doors" campaign to recruit outside areas such as mosques and universities. Since that time, security forces have arrested more than 500 members of the group.
The party is the country's main Islamic opposition. Reacting quickly, Moroccan police rounded up 88 members of the group as part of a crackdown to limit the unauthorised movement's influence.
Al Adl spokesman Fathallah Arslane have claimed that 45 group activists were arrested in the town of Bouarfa in northeast Morocco on Tuesday night before being set free in the early hours of the morning.
The Al Adl members were rounded up earlier in Oujda and Nador, also in the northeast, among them the group's second-in-command Mohamed Abadi. All but one were released, although Abadi and two others must face prosecutors at the end of the month.
"The authorities want to limit the group's activities, not destroy it," said Mohamed Darif, an Islamism specialist at Hassan II university in Mohammedia near Casablanca.
Arslane said: "The authorities want to muzzle us." Al Adl's founder Abdessalam Yassine was under house arrest for almost 10 years until 2000 for challenging the monarchy's powers, including the king's status as Commander of the Faithful - the spiritual leader of the country's Muslim community.
The group only has 250,000 members but would like to see an Islamic state organised according to sharia law, although it claims it rejects violence.
In the short term it says it is fighting for reforms including trimming the power of the royal palace and giving more authority to the prime minister. But Interior Minister Chakib Benmoussa said this week the group's unauthorised activity had put it "outside the logic of the law" and that: "It is the duty of the state to enforce scrupulously the law."
Observers say the scale of popular support for Al Adl is enough to make it a force to be reckoned with were it ever allowed to enter mainstream politics. Its leaders prefer to remain aloof, insisting they will stay on the sidelines unless the government reforms the constitution.
Tags: Morocco Fes, Maghreb news
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